Category Archives: Traveling Philosophy / History of Ideas

Allan Ramsay, by William Aikman 1722, Scottish National Portrait Gallery

In 1754, the portrait painter and antiquarian Allan Ramsay had an idea. He took it to his friends David Hume, philosopher and historian, and Adam Smith, moral and political philosopher, and they liked it. Together, they founded the Select Society, first a discussion club then shortly thereafter a debating club for the intellectual elite of Edinburgh. Besides these three eminent figures of the Scottish Enlightenment, other members who attended that first meeting in the Advocates’ Library on November 12th, 1754 were gentry, clergy, advocates (lawyers), eminent physicians and lawyers, professors, and distinguished well-known men of letters. Yes, men, they were all men, as was customary in eighteenth-century Scotland. Later on, as the Society grew, it welcomed bankers, merchants, and other men of diverse talents who had gained prominence in their fields.

The purpose of the club, according to Rev. Alexander Carlyle, was ‘philosophical inquiry and the improvement of the members in the art of publick speaking.’ The latter, especially, was an important skill for these men, all leaders in academia, religion, business, professional bodies, or public life. Rosalind Carr writes in Gender and Enlightenment Culture in Eighteenth-Century Scotland,

In March 1755, ‘An Account of the Select Socieit [sic] of Edinburgh’ was published in The Scots Magazine, informing the public that: ‘The intention of the gentlemen was, by practice to improve themselves in reasoning and eloquence, and by the freedom of debate, to discover the most effectual methods of promoting the good of the country.’

As the Society grew, it gained renown, though with each growth phase they kept it small enough to remain exclusive. While it never lost its requirement that all members be from the upper crust of society, especially by 1755 they could afford to be very choosy. Being a member of the Select Society gave you instant cachet, and men building a career and establishing a place in society were keen to join. So having a title, money, or an important post wasn’t enough: prospective members had to demonstrate that they were talented and better yet, adept at public speaking and interesting conversation.

David Hume, by Allan Ramsay, 1766, Scottish National Portrait Gallery

To make the Society seem extra-Select, I suppose, the rules were very formal; historian Roger L. Emerson describes them as ‘cumbersome.’ Young up-and-comer James Boswell, who joined in the late 1750’s, approved of the ‘politeness’ in such systems of rules, but Hume preferred the ‘plain roughness’ of the Poker Club, another of the gentlemen’s societies he belonged to. Over time, it seems that many of the Society’s members leaned towards Hume’s view. Attendance began to slip considerably throughout the later 1750’s, and by the end of 1758 the Society had dwindled to a very low and not nearly so distinguished membership. Only the most dedicated members, it seems, were willing to travel to meetings and put up with the old formalities.

By the time of decline and last recorded meeting in early 1764, the Select Society had helped many men build their social and professional circles and establish their reputations as learned and able men. Other clubs and societies directly branched off from this club or were formed by some of its members separately or after this Society ended as well. One was the aforementioned Poker Club, a political group dedicated to establishing a Scottish militia. Others had similar structures and aims as the Select Society but were more dedicated to the arts, the sciences, or general improvement of Scottish life.

Laigh Hall under Parliament Hall, which served as the Advocates Library in the 18th century, Edinburgh, Scotland.

As I am wont to do, I decide to follow the Select Society to their meeting places in Edinburgh. All opportunities to poke my nose into interesting buildings, closes (narrow lanes or passageways between buildings), and archives are worth creating, I think, especially those related to the Scottish Enlightenment! So I begin with the Advocates Library in the old Parliament House, their first meeting place. I’ve been to the current Advocates Library, designed by William Henry Playfair in 1830 and completed with Robert Matheson’s alterations in 1856. (Playfair was one of Edinburgh’s most important architects, and his name and image are to be found all over this city). In response to my inquiries, Senior Librarian Andrea Longson met me at the current Advocates Library door and escorted me under Parliament Hall to Laigh Hall. She told me that this was the home of the Advocates Library during the period I’m looking into, which is when Ramsay, Hume, Smith, and the other members of the newly formed Select Society first met in 1754. Hume was the keeper of the Library at the time, so no doubt it was on his suggestion that the Society meet here, at least at first. The Advocates Library was founded in 1689 and housed in a rented house near Parliament Hall, but as it was with the United States’ Library of Congress and its original collection, the original library building burned down, reducing some of the collection to ashes and leaving some of the surviving books scorched. ‘Laigh,’ Andrea informs me, is Scots for ‘low.’

Northwest corner of Parliament Hall, with communicating door to the Signet Library

Signet Library, the main first-floor hall called the Colonnades

After she shows me around the old hall and its stacks, I ask Andrea about two neighboring sites I’m looking for. She’s able to help me most with one of them, doing so by introducing me to a neighbor, James Hamilton, Research Principal at the Signet Library next door. This is perfect: seven of the advocates which belonged to the Select Society were ‘writers to the signet.’ Then, they were senior members of the Court of Session. According to The Society of Writers to the Signet’s website,

Today, most Writers to the Signet are solicitors in law firms or in-house within the public or private sector. Writers to the Signet take a special oath before an officer of state, the Keeper of the Signet, signifying a personal commitment to the exceptional standards of competence and integrity expected of those associated with the historic seal of Scotland’s kings and queens, known as the Signet. Writers to the Signet belong to Scotland’s College of Justice along with the nation’s senior judges, known as Senators, and its advocates, the equivalent of barristers.

The Signet Library’s lobby is reached by a communicating door at the northwest corner of Parliament Hall, which opens to a receptionist desk. Once a lady at the desk confirms that Mr. Hamilton has an opening in his schedule to see me, I’m taken through a handsome, very large and grand hall that now appears to be used as a daytime tea room, and dining and meeting area. Turns out, it’s now called the Colonnades and can be rented as a venue for special occasions; weddings are often held here.

An upstairs research room and office at Signet Library, Parliament Square, Edinburgh. It’s not over the lobby so it’s not at the site of old St Giles’ Hall, but it is at the same upper level near it.

The William Playfair-designed grand staircase at the Signet Library, across from the lobby and reception desk over where the old Laigh Council House once stood.

The receptionist takes me to an upstairs office lined with books and filled with worktables and desks, where I meet Mr. Hamilton. I tell him of my quest and I’m glad to see he’s interested. In fact, I spend nearly two hours with him. He speaks enthusiastically of the history of Edinburgh and of the library, its architecture and collection. Hamilton finds old maps and records for me, takes me on a tour of the Signet Library rooms upstairs and down, discusses the history of the buildings and closes in and around Parliament Square, helps me find online resources, and even makes me a cup of hot white coffee. What a gracious host!

The handsome Signet Library was built in 1810. Its lobby, into which I first entered from Parliament Hall, rests on the site of the old Laigh Council House. The Select Society held meetings in a room over Laigh Council House after that initial meeting in the Advocates Library, leading to more than a little confusion when I first asked around in the course of my search. Remember, the Select Society held its first meetings in the old Advocates’ Library which is now called Laigh Hall. The room over Laigh Council House where the Select Society met was called St Giles’ Hall, the meeting hall of a Freemasons’ Lodge.

Plan of buildings from an early-mid 1800’s session book in the Signet Library archives, catalog number SP 300.10. ‘Libraries’ shows the site of the Signet Library.

Bookshelves among the colonnades and balconies of the ground floor of the Signet Library

The Signet Library holds at least tens of thousands of volumes and documents, I’ve forgotten exactly how many. In the lower archive rooms, there are session books by the hundreds, among which we find a plan for a proposed new close in Parliament Square, and rows upon rows of other old books of every description. I wish I had hours to dig through them.

Later, as we tour the library, Mr. Hamilton points out that where the colonnaded central hall of the Signet Library had to be redesigned in parts because of an early design flaw: its upper windows, which let in plenty of necessary light, also didn’t allow much space there for books! Above the interior balconies, I can see the somewhat awkwardly, partially obscured upper windows by the re-designed book alcoves and shelves around them. However, seeing it all with a non-architect’s eye, I wouldn’t have thought much of it. The room looks graceful to me.

Upper hall of the Signet Library. The windows on the north side are covered over with bookshelves to hold more of the Library’s massive collection, leaving only one side well-lit enough to see the volumes them by day.

‘The Heart of Midlothian, Restored from Original Drawings, Models, etc, After the Print Published in 1852 by Mssrs W. & A. K. Johnston’, from Grant’s Old and New Edinburgh. The Old Tolbooth is in the center, St Giles with its crowned spire just beyond to the right.

At the time that the Select Society met here over the old Laigh Council House, Parliament Square was much more densely built up than it is today. The Old Tolbooth prison and place of torture, once an early meeting place of Parliament, narrowed the Royal Mile where it passed near St Giles and Parliament Square. Today, you can see the outline of the horrible Old Tolbooth marked out in the cobblestones in metal squares, and a heart outlined in stone indicates the spot where criminals were executed first by guillotine, then by hanging. Tenements crowded the winding closes, and little wooden booths and makeshift shops were built right up against the sides of old St Giles.

Detail of an early eighteenth-century(?) drawing of the old Parliament House, St Giles, the Tolbooth, and the surrounding area hanging on a corridor wall of the Signet Library. The Laigh Council House, which would have stood near the northwest end of Parliament House, does not appear to have been built yet when this drawing was created.

1854 plan featuring Parliament Square and St Giles, with annotations in pen and pencil, courtesy of Dawn Webster. You can see that scores of surrounding tenements have been cleared away, the Old Tolbooth torn down (1817), and the square opened up.

Royal Exchange and John’s Coffee House, Edinburgh, by Green ca. 19th c., Glasgow Museums Resource Centre (GMRC), free to use CC BY-NC-ND. This was not the same location as the original one where committee meetings of the Select Society met decades earlier. The Royal Exchange location is shown in a plan printed in Grant’s Old and New Edinburgh.

We also discuss the likely location of John’s Coffeehouse at Parliament Square, a favorite haunt of many of the Select Society’s members and meeting place for the committee devising and discussing its aforementioned ‘cumbersome’ bylaws. I have not yet been able to nail down its exact site. I’ve found many, many references to it, including in primary sources from that time and not long afterward. Without exception, however, these sources refer to the coffeehouse as if everyone already knows where it is. According to Robert Chamber’s Traditions of Edinburgh page 112, it was ‘situated in the north-east corner of Parliament Close,’ which would place it somewhere across from the east end of St Giles. According to my sources, it was not only a popular social hangout, it was also a meeting place for advocates to discuss cases and arrange for the public sales of estates lost to debt. John’s Coffeehouse may have moved to the Royal Exchange, now the City Chambers, which was completed in 1760; some sources list a John’s Coffeehouse at that nearby location just across the High Street after the time the Select Society committee would have met there. I suspect that many of its later and former members would have continued to hang out at John’s if it did indeed move to the new location.

Signet Library at Parliament Square in the evening light

Niddry’s Street rising to the north from Cowgate, with the modern St Cecelia’s Hall extension to the right

St Cecilia’s Hall original front on Niddry Street, just up the hill from the Cowgate.

The next morning, I go to one more Select Society meeting place, which Emerson identifies in his Oxford Dictionary of National Biography article as the ‘Mason’s Hall (Mary’s Chapel) in Niddry Wynd.’ I find that Niddry Wynd is no longer there, but Niddry Street is, which follows the line of the old Wynd a little to the east. The overpass of the South Bridge, built 1785-1788, made it necessary to move it over that way, which explains why St Cecilia’s Hall crowds the narrow street on its east side.

Most of the information I find about Mary’s Chapel and Mason’s Hall is in entries about St Cecilia’s Hall. It was built as a concert hall for a musical society who met in one of the rooms adjoining Mary’s Chapel. Joe Rock, consult historian for Scottish material culture, writes in his ‘Analysis of the Timeline for St Cecilia’s Hall,’

St Cecilia’s Hall was built from 1760 for a group of wealthy gentlemen and aristocrats, members of the Edinburgh Musical Society. The Society dates officially from 1728 but research for this article has shown that they met in Mary’s Chapel, a building a few yards north of the Hall owned by the Incorporation of Wrights and Masons, from April 1725.

When I initially read Emerson’s article stating the Select Society met in Mason’s Hall, I immediately thought, ‘Oh, Freemasons!’ since they met in the Freemasons’ room over Laigh Council House. But as we see here, this was a room where builders in stone met.

Looking north on Niddry’s Street. Mary’s Chapel stood to the right, about where the pale midcentury building stands now

Thus ends my hunt for the Select Society’s haunts in the mid-eighteenth century, at the height of the Scottish Enlightenment. For more about the Select Society and other Scottish clubs and societies, I especially recommend Carr’s book. You’ll find this and other excellent resources listed below. In all, they contain a wealth of detail about the history, the beauties and rich culture of this ancient city from its birth on a rocky hill. Enjoy!

~ Special thanks to Dawn Webster at the Scottish Courts & Tribunals Service; Andrea Longson, Senior Librarian of the Advocates Library at Parliament House; and James Hamilton, Research Principal of Signet Library, for your time and assistance with my site research!

Robert Burns letter to William Niven, 30 August 1786, at National Library of Scotland, special showing 25 January 2018

Robert Burns, aka ‘the Bard’, is, as you may know, one of Scotland’s most honored sons. His poems and songs are widely regarded as among the most beautiful and resonant literary creations of all of Scotland’s people. Some of the people I’ve written about for Ordinary Philosophy were inspired and influenced by Burns, notably Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass. I’ll be writing much more and regularly about Burns before long in the context of my upcoming Frederick Douglass in Scotland series and pieces on the Scottish history of ideas, stay tuned!

In honor of Robert Burns’s birthday celebration, aka Burns Night, the National Library of Scotland put one of his original letters on display for a few hours today, with a little informational card that provides a brief context. I’ll be elaborating on the significance of his planned emigration to Jamaica in my next Douglass series as well.

The letter reads:

My Dr Friend,

I have been very throng every since I saw you, and have not got the wh[ole of my] promise performed to you: but you know [the old] Proverb “The break o’ day’s no the bre[ak o’ a] bargain” – Have patience and I will [pay you] all. – I thank you with the most heart-felt sincerity for the worthy knot of lads you introduced me to. – Never did I meet with so many congenial souls together, without one dissonant jar in the Concert. To all and each of them make my friendly Complnts particularly “spunkie, youthfu’ Tammy.” Remember me in the most respectful [manner to the] Baillie, and Mrs Niven, Mr Dun, and the two truly worthy old Gentlemen I had the honor of being introduced to on Friday; tho’ I am afraid the conduct you forced me on may make them see me in a light I would fondly think I do not deserve. –

I will perform the rest of my promise soon. – In the mean time, remember this, never blow my Songs amo[ng] the Million, as I would abhor to hear every Prentice mouthing my poor performances in the streets. – Every one of [my] Maybole friends are welcome to a Copy, if they chuse; but [I w]ish them to go no farther. – I mean it as a small [mark] of my respect for them: a respect as sincere as the [faith] of dying SAINTS. –

I arise early this morning and take a 40-minute train ride east from Edinburgh’s Waverley Station to Berwick-upon-Tweed at the mouth of the River Tweed, in the northeast corner of England. From there, I take the 60 bus east to Chirnside, a twenty-minute ride to a small village of just under 1,500 people. As I leave Berwick-upon-Tweed, a few flurries of snow are gently sprinkling down; when I exit the bus at Chirnside, the snowflakes are larger and fall much more frequently. The bus drops me right across the street from my first destination of the day: the Chirnside Community Center.

Located at the southeast corner of Main and Crosshill, a buttress of the community center sports a plaque for its most famous and accomplished former inhabitant: the great empiricist philosopher and historian David Hume. It was placed here to celebrate the tricentennial of his birth, May 7th, 1711. While Hume was not born here at Chirnside (he was born in Edinburgh), his family returned to Ninewells, the Home family home a little ways southwest of the village, when David was very small. (The family name was spelled H-o-m-e at the time but pronounced ‘Hume’; David changed the spelling so that those outside of Scotland would know how to pronounce his name.) Little David grew up here until he returned to Edinburgh at age eleven to study at the University. Ninewells, on the north bank of the Whiteadder River, later became his summer residence. It was David Hume who first inspired me to visit Edinburgh, upon which I fell in love with that incomparable city. So when I discovered that the University of Edinburgh, Hume’s alma mater, had a master’s program in intellectual history, I applied and they accepted. Now, I live here in beautiful Scotland!

Chirnside Community Center with Hume’s plaque and to the right in the foreground, the memorial clock for Formula One racer Jim Clark, another of Chirnside’s famous one-time residents. Clark, who died in a racing accident, is buried here in Chirnside.

I’ve been planning to take this trip to Chirnside since my 2014 trip to Edinburgh, but I didn’t make it out here then. I’m so excited to be here today, and the snowfall is heightening my sense of adventure. After all, I grew up and lived in California nearly all of my life, and falling snow was not something you see much of there unless you live in the mountains or way up north, neither of which was true for me. So falling snow still never fails to give me a little thrill, a feeling of being in a new and unexpected, even magical place. As I head south on Crosshill, the snowfall is rapidly growing thicker, now falling in big, fluffy flakes. As I continue down the hill, Crosshill becomes Kirkgate where the road veers to the right where it meets the path that leads to the bright white primary school, at the bottom of the slope a little off to the left. The name of the road, Kirkgate, indicates my next destination but one.

Dovecote Cottage, Chirnside, Scottish Borders

On my way to the old kirk (Scots for ‘church’), I keep watch for the structure I’m looking for, which I should find somewhere near here on my left. I spot a sign on the corner of a house: ‘Dovecote Cottage’. Ah hah! A dovecote is just the thing I’m looking for! Though the gate to the property is open, I’m loathe to enter the garden without a by-your-leave. So I walk slowly past, looking for someone I can talk to or perhaps a public path that will give me a good look into the garden. I find the gate open to a much wider drive just past Dovecote Cottage; the name on the gate, ‘White House,’ describes the large structure I pass as I enter. It appears to be a more public place than the cozy little cottage enclosure, so I don’t feel as if I’m trespassing or infringing on anyone’s privacy. Just a little ways in, I clearly see what I’m looking for off to my left over the garden wall, just where my sources said I would find it: in a garden near the church.

The dovecote built by the Humes of Ninewells, Chirnside, Scotland. It’s in the garden of Dovecote Cottage; this view is from the White House drive

The dovecote looks something like a giant hive built by a race of bees much larger and more skilled at masonry than any found on Earth. It’s had a new roof put on sometime since 1913, the date of a photograph I consulted during my research for identification. According to ‘Heritage Sites Around Chirnside,’ published by the Scottish Borders Council, it was built by a member of the Hume (again, variously spelled H-o-m-e) family in the 16th century on land won in a wager with a neighbor. This would explain why it’s at such a distance from the Ninewells grounds. A dovecote is a structure for raising doves and pigeons, a traditional and popular practice. I don’t know what the purpose was other than the enjoyment of their beauty and variety and of hearing their clucks and coos; I know people eat doves and pigeons (squab) but I believe that wasn’t then, and isn’t now, the primary purpose of pigeon-keeping.

Approaching the Old Church / Chirnside Parish Church from Kirkyard Gate, Chirnside, Scotland, with the Tweedmouth Memorial Gateway to the right

Lady Tweedmouth’s memorial tablet and grave at Chirnside Parish Church

I continue south on Kirkgate and before long, I see the old parish church on a rise to my left. The kirk is reached through a grand stone gateway: the Tweedmouth Gateway, named for Baron and Baroness Tweedmouth, erected in their honor by their son after the former’s death in 1909. Lady Tweedmouth was buried here in 1904, and in 1907, Lord Tweedmouth made extensive repairs and upgrades to the old church in her memory.

The building retains a few sections of the original Norman structure, including the south doorway under the portico (which I kick myself for neglecting to take a picture of!). The original church, a rectangular structure much smaller than what stands here today, was originally built in the 1100’s; the church was formally consecrated in 1242. It was largely rebuilt in 1572, repaired in 1705, enlarged in 1837, and repaired again and embellished during the early 1900’s.

A relation of Hume, it seems, was made parson of the church in 1573; at least, John Home shared the family name. David’s uncle George was the minister here when David was a boy. This church was the Presbyterian Church when Hume lived here and for long before. Hume’s mother Katherine was a devout Presbyterian and this was the Presbyterian church, so Hume likely attended services here regularly throughout his youth. Given his later lack of religious belief, it’s less certain that Hume would have done so as regularly when he spent summers and vacations here when he was an adult. Yet Hume was a sociable fellow and like any British village, its kirk would have been a center of social life; so, I think he would have attended sometimes at least.

Chirnside Parish Church through the front gate

Given the religiosity of Hume’s family, I wonder what they thought of his religious skepticism. Being a very affable fellow, I think it unlikely he would have made a point of it with his family. In a 1745 letter, he writes with affection of his recently deceased mother and of mutual love and concern between himself and other members of his family, with no hint of rift or strain that may have been caused by religious strife. Hume was widely reputed to be an atheist and was notorious for it, but I think his equally well-known kindness and friendliness softened the effect that it may otherwise have had on public opinion. Because of his fascination with philosophy, I suspect his mother Katherine may have viewed any skepticism she spotted in him as the result of philosophical exploration, not wickedness or pride. She recognized early her David’s lively and precocious intelligence and saw to it that he had an excellent education. As I mentioned earlier, he attended the University of Edinburgh when he was just barely eleven. He never did graduate because he grew bored there; in 1735, he wrote of that university experience ‘there is nothing to be learnt from a Professor, which is not to be met with in Books.’ So, he dropped out at age 15 and continued his studies on his own, rejecting the study of law his family expected him to pursue (after his father, who was an advocate, as a lawyer’s called here, and who died when David was only two) in favor of his beloved philosophy. From all accounts, however, the University improved greatly not long after Hume attended. His nephew, also named David Hume, attended the University as well, becoming a distinguished advocate and the University’s Professor of Scottish Law.

Chirnside Parish Church, west side

Chirnside Parish Church, east side from the kirkyard

Chirnside Parish Church and kirkyard; some details are easier to see when free of the snow cover. The Norman doorway is under the pointy-roofed portico on the right. Photo is by Kavin Rae, free to use under a CC BY-SA Creative Commons license.

Chirnside Parish Church, interior from choir loft to the west

I circle the church slowly, both to see the details and to avoid slipping on the icy, snowy walkways. I try every door and tah-dah! I find a side door that was left unlocked. It opens with difficulty, appearing rarely used, the wood swelled so that it scrapes reluctantly along the ground as I slowly, carefully edge it open just enough to enter. I find myself in a very cobwebby stairwell. I ascend and find myself in a little choir loft, thick with white dust, an old fabric banner tossed over one of the pews. I step gingerly at first but the old wood floor is clearly very thick and sturdy.

The church, even with the lights out, looks festive with its red carpet, its three appliqued holiday banners hanging from the large central choir loft, and its Christmas decorations including, I’m charmed to see, a plastic baby doll in a rustic crib to represent the infant Christ. Though there’s a small pipe organ above and a piano below, I also see a boombox on a table. It’s low church, solid, practical, plain but not severe, with no imagery save a large plain cross over the raised, heavy wood pulpit.

Looking north towards Chirnside from a path just off B6437. You can see the Chirnside Parish Church rising above the trees to the right

I take a good look around and many photos but don’t stay long: not sure I’m exactly trespassing since this is a place of public worship and the door was unlocked, but since this is a gray area, I don’t overstay any welcome I may have had. I close the door tightly behind me as I leave.

I continue south on Kirkgate, which turns to B4637 after it crosses A6105, the main thoroughfare east across this part of the Borders from Berwick-upon-Tweed. I’m looking to see how much of the old Ninewells estate I can see from the east side. I continue south as far as the Chirnside Sawmill, about a third of a mile south of the church. This takes me north and east of where the old Ninewells estate was, but based on the maps I consulted earlier, the best access is from the main road to the north of here. I retrace my steps, enjoying the ever-snowier landscape and the new views of the village from each bend.

David Hume Way looking towards the Whiteadder River and the site of Ninewells

When I reach A6105, I turn left. After about a quarter of a mile, I turn right on Whiteadder Way, a road leading into a new-looking housing development. The sign tells me that I’ll access the next place I’m headed, a street named David Hume View. There’s nothing of historical interest that I know of relating to this street other than the name and the fact that you can see part of the old Ninewells estate grounds when you look south from the south end of the street. I look, but the view is blurred by the fresh snow that simultaneously beautifies it in its soft, pristine way.

‘In all that idyllic countryside of the Merse, there is no lovelier situation than the estate of Ninewells. The house itself stands on a bluff some 80 feet above the rushing waters of the Whiteadder. Down the bluff a few yards, and to the south-east of the house, an overhanging rock forms a shallow cave. Here, David Hume probably played as a boy, or read a book in solitary majesty; and here, according to the inevitable local legend, he indulged in profound philosophical meditation.’ – Mossner’s Life of David Hume, p 20

At Ninewells House, this man directs me to the path towards the site of the old Ninewells estate and the Whiteadder River

I retrace my steps to the foot of Whiteadder Way and turn right. On the south side of A6105, just as it veers north, there’s a pretty gabled house with its name prominently displayed on its stone wall, just to the right of the gate: ‘Ninewells House.’ I know I can reach the old Ninewells grounds from this direction from my maps, but this appears to be a private drive. I have only a moment to consider my next step when a man appears. He greets me, and in response to my inquiry, he directs me to the entry of the path that runs parallel to the drive heading towards the Whiteadder River, which will then continue all the way to and along the riverbank. I thank him and find the head of the path a short distance away to the east. It’s prominently marked by a large historical placard about David Hume, though I find it nearly entirely covered with snow. I take pictures of it to refer to later; I have to do so quickly since the snow is determined to obscure it nearly as fast as I sweep it away.

Historical placard at head of path to Ninewells site and Hume Walk.

Continuing straight on the path to Ninewells site and Hume Walk

The house that stands just north of the site of Ninewells, on my left as I continue west on the path

I tromp through the accumulating snow and find that I have to step ever more carefully. I’m wearing my good sturdy leather boots but I discover that the rubber surface I had installed on the soles is not as grippy in the ice and snow as I would wish. At one point, the path leads me to the foot of the same unpaved drive that passes through the Ninewells House gate. I continue on where it veers right, then pause when I arrive at another curve to the left which enters the gate to a large, handsome, modern classic-style stone house. This house, I know from my sources, was built just north of the site of the house Hume grew up in. I also know, from my maps and the confirmation of the man at Ninewells House, that the path to the river will allow me to approach that site from below the house. So I continue past the house and onto the river path. As I walk, I join up and chat with three people also taking this walk, accompanied by their two dogs, joyful and frolicking in the snow.

Post marking the start of David Hume Walk along the Whiteadder River

The path curves along the rise then leads to a set of wooden steps that leads down to the riverside. There’s a post here that identifies the path, which turns off to the right along the river, as the David Hume Walk. The site of Ninewells should be to my left here, on the north bank of the bend of the river from west to south. My sources tell me that southeast of the house there was a shallow riverside cave and other hollows and overhangs where young David would retreat and play or think. He and his brother also loved to fish in this river. So I decide to turn right first, to explore the river where it curves down to the southwest to see if I can spot any caves, overhangs, and likely fishing spots.

I need to pick my steps ever more carefully as I go along, the path growing ever slippier, and approaching so close to the Whiteadder in some spots that I’m in real danger of sliding right in. I walk in the branchy leaf-litter to the right of the path as often as I can, where my shoes find a better grip. In some places, I hold to the naked branches of the nearby trees and shrubs. Luckily, the sets of wooden steps at the steep rises and descents are each equipped with a rough but sturdy handrail. No doubt, the steps are often rendered slippery by Scotland’s abundant precipitation.

David Hume Walk along the Whiteadder River, looking west and a little south

During this glorious, wintry riverside walk, I see pheasant, ducks, and many small birds; at one point, off to my right, I see a very large hare bounding across a field. I also hear occasional shooting, presumably for pheasant, which reminds me not to leave the paths or hop fences to explore any private field or wood. Scotland’s laws permit free passage even through private property, but I’m not entirely confident that my bright red coat can guarantee against a hunting accident.

At a high clearing overlooking the river, I reach a wooden bench. It’s a good place, I think, to enjoy the little thermos of hot coffee I obtained at the little grocery store in the village shortly after I arrived this morning. I was a little surprised to discover, from the instructions posted on the wall behind the counter, that orders of fresh milk, bread, and eggs must be placed ahead of time; they don’t stock them otherwise. Hot water and instant coffee, however, are available on demand. Though nothing fancy, the coffee is warming and bracing, and I enjoy it thoroughly.

David Hume Walk along the Whiteadder River, looking east and north towards Ninewells.

After I finish my coffee, I brush as much snow off of myself as I can and bundle more firmly into my clothing: at this point, my coat is damp in places and my boots and two pairs of wool socks have allowed some of the cold and wet to reach my feet. I turn back and retrace my steps, walking more slowly this time and looking for the rocky overhangs I may find here. I don’t find much, but there is a small one with a tree that’s grown over the top of it. Perhaps the riverbank is higher here than it used to be, filling in the bottom of it. I think I’ll return in the summer when the river is lower and the banks are more accessible and not obscured by snow. When I reach the place where the wooden steps ascend the rise to the main path, I continue north this time, toward the site of Ninewells.

Stairs to the left continue the Chirnside Path, the unmarked branch straight ahead leads northeast and thus towards Ninewells site. So, I take the branch straight ahead

Left, the south side of the house built northeast of the original Ninewells site. Right, the path I came from branching north from Chirnside & Paxton Path

Path between the Chirnside Path and Ninewells site, with part of the rotted wood walkway passing over the springs. This is the view facing southwest as I’m returning to the main Chirnside path

As I walk, I see a raised wooden walkway rotting away under moss and leaf litter. Shortly after, my boots step off frozen ground and sink into mud. A few yards along, there’s another, even wetter patch. This is just what I hoped to find! It’s confirmation that I’m in the right place: Ninewells was named for the nine springs on the estate, which bubbled up from the slope down to the river. I’ve just passed two of them. These will have to do in lieu of any historical markers I fail to find here.

I imagine the old house and the three children, John, Katherine, and David, returning from their play along the river, wet and cold, ready for mother Katherine to bundle them up with books by the fireside. My mental picture of the old house is hazy, though, since I’ve found no images that reveal just what the house looked like during Hume’s time here. There’s an old drawing of the house, made no later than 1840, that I’ve seen here and there in my resources. It’s also reproduced on the David Hume historical placard at the head of the path to the river, which you can see below. Two successive fires damaged and then largely destroyed the original house, so David’s only brother John, his senior by two years and hence the family heir, had it rebuilt, likely in a very similar style to the original.

Ninewells House prior to 1840, from David Hume historical placard near Ninewells House

The house at Ninewells changed many times over the years, sometimes restored and expanded, sometimes torn down and replaced altogether. Its last incarnation, in World War II, saw its use as a hostel for displaced people and a prisoner of war camp. Its ruins were finally torn down inJanuary of 1964. (I also find a photo of Ninewells’ ruins from the southwest, which would be my view from the path if it were still standing, in a Historic Environment Scotland website, but I’m still waiting to receive permission to publish it here.)

Clear view of the Ninewells site and south side of the modern house built to the northwest of it, looking northwest from the Chirnside Path. That places me somewhere very near or perhaps right on the old Ninewells house site. There’s no marker I can find.

I return to the main road, A6105, just to the east of the Ninewells house. A6105 veers sharply to the north where the driveway of Ninewells House meets the road, then a quarter mile on, makes a perpendicular meeting with Chirnside’s Main Street. Turning right would take you back into the village, but I’m not headed there yet. I turn left towards the river and the bridge.

The snow is still falling and my footing on the sidewalks ever more treacherous. As I walk along, there’s a truck salting the roads, so the snow on the asphalt turns quickly to muddy, icy brine. On my way to the bridge, I’m offered a ride by a kindly elderly couple. Then a little further on, I’m liberally splashed with that salty, slushy road water by the driver of a car paying no heed to the puddles or my proximity to them. I’ve spotted the danger and step as far off the road as I can when I see a car approaching, and most drivers see it too, thoughtfully veering over to avoid spraying me. But that one speedy driver just didn’t notice or care. Oh well, I’m wearing a secondhand coat anyway. From the head of the path to Ninewells to the bridge, it’s a little over a mile.

Walking on the A6105 towards the bridge over Whiteadder River from Chirnside, Scottish Borders

The David Hume Bridge over the Whiteadder Water is a modern span. I’m not sure just when it was built since its record in Historic Environment Scotland’s website doesn’t say. Not only is this bridge significant because it passes over the beautiful, rushing Whiteadder River, but because it parallels the old Chirnside Bridge. Hume left the sum of 100 pounds and instructions for its repair in his will. The bridge likely looks very much as it did then. Just beyond the bridge is the paper mill, a handsome Italianate structure built about a hundred years after the old bridge.

Looking at the old Chirnside Bridge from the David Hume Bridge over the Whiteadder River

The old Chirnside Bridge over the Whiteadder River, near Chirnside, Scottish Borders

I turn and head back towards Chirnside, but pause to double back on the narrow little path that leads to the old bridge. I find I’m prevented from walking onto it by a high gate and warning signs to keep off, enforced via a CCTV camera. At this point, my gloves and much of my pants are soaked through and my toes are very cold, dampening any naughty urge I might have to climb over or go off path to find a way around the gate. Looking is enough for me for now. Maybe I’ll cross it if I get a chance to return this summer.

I return to Chirnside via the A6105, with another car splashing me even more liberally than the first one. I’m warmed somewhat by walking briskly up the hill, but still, I’m even wetter than I was on my way to the bridge, and my coat is looking rather disreputable. After a very chilly mile, my heart is gladdened when I see that the pub at the Red Lion Inn, just steps away from my bus stop across from the Chirnside Community Center, is open.

I find myself in a cozy, cheery room lined with gloriously warm radiators. The bartender nods his permission for me to strip off my coat and gloves and drape them on one of the radiators to dry. I plop on a barstool and promptly order a pint. My American accent, as it so often does here, sparks almost immediate conversation. I’m inclined to keep it for that reason.

I chat with the bartender and its one other patron as I hungrily devour my picnic lunch of cheese, oatcakes, biscuits, and a clementine I hadn’t found a good place to stop and eat earlier. It tastes that much better here in the warmth, washed down with my pint, accompanied by jolly conversation. We talk about the weather, where we’re all from originally, about how Russell, my barstool neighbor, was a geneticist, at one time doing research work at UCSF, and how he and his wife came to settle in this village upon retirement.

Once I’ve eaten, I move to the other side of the room to drape myself over the radiator along with my coat and gloves, mostly to warm my legs, chilly in my sodden jeans. The room is narrow here, placing little distance between us, and the conversation continues easily. When asked about what brings me here, I tell them, and we discuss my adventures of the day. Not long into that conversation, Russell says that there are just a few listed historical structures in Chirnside. He mentions the church and another place or two, and in answer to his expectant look, I say ‘…and the dovecote!’ I’ve evidently said the right thing since Russell’s face lights up. ‘I live at Dovecote Cottage!’ he tells me. I’m delighted to hear this, and Russell proceeds to tell me all about the pedigree of the structure and how dovecotes are used to ‘home’ pigeons.

I tell them of my visit to Ninewells, describing the location in relation to the river bend and landscape, and of finding the springs. They confirm that I was at the right place. At one point, Russell stops me. It’s ‘Nine-ulls,’ he says. Oh, I say apologetically, I often pronounce place names wrong here, I’m still learning. No, says the bartender, it’s ‘Ninewells’, just as you say, it’s named for the nine wells, and pointedly, to Russell, it has a ‘W’ in it. You English don’t say words right. We share a laugh over this. Our conversation continues, animated and a great deal of fun. It lasts for nearly an hour, until the time comes when I need, mentally as well as practically, to prepare myself to emerge into the cold and head for the bus stop.

At one point, Russell and Teddy, the bartender (I think I remember your name rightly, Teddy; if not and you’re reading this, please let me know!) mention one site I know nothing about: an old primary school which they claim David Hume attended as a child. This surprises me since it’s my understanding that young David and his siblings were taught at home by Katherine and tutors until the boys attended University. Perhaps I’m missing something? Russell and Teddy have an amusing little back-and-forth about the decision to place the plaque on the community center instead of the old primary school building, and how that decision was characteristic of a particular local official.

The building which Russell reports was the old Chirnside primary school expanded and converted into a family home

Russell volunteers to show me the old school, now a house, which they assure me is very nearby. When the clock advances enough to tell me we should leave to make that little excursion before I catch my bus, I rise. We laugh at the steam rising from my pant legs, well heated by the radiator I’ve been resting them against. My gloves at least are now well warmed and half dry, my coat now only damp in the places it had been sodden. I’m glad to see the muddy look has faded enough to be scarcely noticeable.

We walk past the last two buildings on Main Street before Dominies Loan and stop at the next building, on the northeast corner of Main and Dominies. It’s a very ordinary-looking, with pebbledash front and sides and a very steep roof. I comment that it looks very modern to me, and Russell agrees. But, he says, it’s been much altered since that time, as have many of the old buildings. In fact, the building was originally much smaller, and with all the additions and new siding, it’s unrecognizable. We walk up to where we can see the back of the house, and Russell points out the old stonework.

I’m intrigued. I don’t find this in any of the materials I found in my research for this day’s trip, and can’t confirm this tidbit of oral history in the resources I consult afterward. Perhaps I’ll find it in my research over time, or a helpful reader of my account of this day will guide me to some record of it. I do find an old Chirnside primary school as a listed historical building, but it’s at the other end of the village, the west end of Main Street. That one was built many decades after Hume’s death, and its only relation to him is that one of his two nieces, Katherine or Agnes, established it. My sources, Mossner’s Life of David Hume and the historical listing for the building in Historic Environment Scotland, don’t help me ascertain which.

The rear walls of the old house which may have been a school, revealing some of the old stonework

Mourners enjoying an after-funeral smoke and a pint at the Red Lion Inn on Chirnside’s Main Street. I take this photo as I wait for the 60 bus back to Berwick-upon-Tweed.

We look at the building, discussing the history of the town a little more. Then, I regretfully tell Russell it’s time for me to get to the bus stop. I give him my thanks and a hug and tell him I hope to see him if I make it back and to hear from him sometime, especially if the account I write of my day’s adventure here contains any mistakes or is missing some important information.

I catch my bus, after a mercifully short wait, and return to Berwick-upon-Tweed. As I descend the steps which take me to the rail station platform and waiting room, I discover a sign which contains an interesting historical tidbit about both local and Scottish national history:

Railroad station platform on the site of the Great Hall of Berwick Castle, Berwick-upon-Tweed, England

Continuing the drying-out process with the radiators in the railroad station waiting room at Berwick-upon-Tweed, England

In the waiting room, I find a comfy spot, drape my things over the radiators again, review my photos, jot down notes, and doze off a little: I was up early after a late night of research, and it’s been a somewhat taxing day. I have about an hour wait before my train arrives, but this is a nice cozy place to wait and dry off. I look forward to a hot dinner back in Edinburgh in a cozy little Sudanese restaurant near my place with some friends who are in town.

This September, I visited the Advocates Library at Parliament House on the Royal Mile. It was open to the public during Edinburgh’s annual Doors Open Days. I had long wanted to visit Advocates’ Library and was planning to contact Parliament Hall to arrange one, but DOD made this much easier!

The philosopher who first brought me here to Edinburgh, David Hume, was the keeper of the Advocates’ Library from 1752-1757. The Library was founded by George Mackenzie in 1682. Now strictly a law library, it originally acted as Scotland’s library of deposit, which, since 1925, is now the function of the National Library of Scotland.

The Advocates Library and the Scottish Enlightenment, placard at Parliament Hall, Edinburgh for Doors Open Days

Keeper of the Advocates Library chair and desk. David Hume was the keeper of the Library from 1752-1757. The position was a poorly paid one, but it gave Hume access to a treasure trove of resources for his History of England, which brought him wealth and fame

Ways to enter the original Advocates Library, placard at Parliament Hall, Edinburgh

Interior of the Advocates Library, Edinburgh

Samuel Johnson and James Boswell‘s Visit to the Advocates Library, placard near the entrance from Parliament Hall, Edinburgh for Doors Open Days

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Mark Twain Memorial Bridge on the Missouri River, view from the riverside at the foot of Hill St, Hannibal, Missouri

Journal: Hannibal, Missouri, evening of July 31st, 2017

I’m sitting here on the waterfront between the Mississippi River and the train tracks, facing northwest. My back is leaning against a stone wall. The train whistle was deafening, but now the engine has passed and the freight cars are rumbling slowly by. The low, warm, dark peach last light of sunset is glowing gently through the steel truss bridge. I have a bottle of wine at my side and my laptop computer on my lap. The night is warm and humid. I’ve found a dark alcove beneath the park’s perimeter footpath so I can better see the last light of the sunset, and to avoid the clouds of mayflies swarming in the light around every post lamp.

Hannibal, Missouri, view towards the lighthouse from Main Street, evening

John Marshall Clemen’s office across from the family home on Hill St, Hannibal, Missouri

Old town Hannibal is very old-timey America. Lots of brick, and false fronts, and clapboard siding. Look to the west end of the street and you’ll see a steep tree-covered hill with a perfect little white lighthouse perched on its side. The main street’s storefronts are mostly full, with antique and novelty shops, souvenir shops, cafes, ice cream and candy parlors, and bars and restaurants. Walk up only a block or two south up the hill and it’s half ghost town. The economy of the historic downtown, like so many in America, appears to be driven by tourism.

I walked to the old town’s main sights earlier this evening: the great American author Mark Twain’s boyhood home, his father’s law office, and so on, and photographed their exteriors. I’ll go inside these places tomorrow.

I must go now, the mosquitoes have found me and they’re swarming, out for my blood. I’ll camp tonight near the caves, in the campground that a local man I chatted with earlier directed me to.

Samuel Clemen’s family home on the side facing Hill St, Hannibal, Missouri

Hannibal, Missouri, evening of July 31st, 2017

When I arrive in Hannibal (from New Salem via the 72 West), it’s in the soft light of early evening. It’s still pretty warm, the road food I brought with me, celery, peanut butter, apples, are softened, wilted from the heat of the day. The car’s air conditioning is good but I find I need to alternate with fresh air, even when it’s hot. The conditioned air is refreshingly dry on these muggy midwest summer days but from after sitting in it for too long, I feel suddenly as if I’m desiccating. Then the windows come down.

I’m in an excited mood. There’s always a feeling of discovery in crossing a river, I think, even in these days when wide, smooth highway bridges can make you forget to notice what you’re passing over one. When you do notice, though, you get the feeling that a river crossing is significant, like an anniversary or a holiday. River crossings used to be difficult, and something deep within us remembers that. Anniversaries, holidays, rivers are all markers that remind us, with a jolt, that though we once came from someplace, sometime, we’re now somewhere else, sometime later. We humans like these markers and boundaries. They place us so that, for a moment at least, we’ve on one shore or another, no longer adrift.

And I recall that young Samuel Clemens, like young Abraham Lincoln, had once been a river craft pilot: Lincoln of flatboats, Clemens of steamboats. Both took their crafts to New Orleans, and both were amazed, delighted, and impressed by what they saw there… and sometimes dismayed. As President during the great American war over slavery, Lincoln had many occasions to recall his first sight of chained slaves on their way to market in New Orleans. While his parents hated slavery and taught him that it was wrong, it was this experience that revealed its horrific reality to him, especially upon recollection and reflection. After Samuel Clemens renamed himself Mark Twain, a riverboat pilot’s term indicating a safe depth for passage, he realized that the slavery he grew up with and took for granted was a great moral wrong. Few works of scholarship, art, or literature reveal this to the moral imagination as impactfully and durably as his magnum opus Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

Home of Tom Blankenship on North St, Hannibal, Missouri. Blankenship was the inspiration for Huckleberry Finn’s character in the novel of the same name; there’s a placard in the window identifying it as the ‘Huck Finn House’.

Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn sculpture, Hannibal, Missouri

I pull off on the side of North St, just north of N. Main St to stretch and look around. To my right, there’s a clapboard building on little grassy slope. I approach: there’s a plaque in the window identifying it as the ‘Huck Finn House.’ A little ahead of me to my left, there’s a little park with a sculpture on a pedestal in a small park. I clamber onto the low wall surrounding it for a closer look. Yes, the two figures portray Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn. I return to the car, pull it into a nearby parking lot, tuck my laptop into my bag, and head towards Main Street. Before I leave the parking lot, a man and I exchange greetings. He’s organizing a town revitalization event. I can’t accept his kind invitation, however, since I’ll be leaving town before it happens. But we chat awhile about Hannibal, its past and its future, and I follow his pointing finger to the main Twain sites. I visit and map them out in my mind so I can explore them tomorrow during business hours, and chat with some local ladies hanging outside of the Main Street Wine Stoppe.

Journal: Hannibal, Missouri, night of July 31st, 2017

I reach the campground. There are no lights on in the registration office; it’s clearly no longer staffed for the night. I enter the campground and choose a spot among many that lack registration cards clipped to the signs. I’ll pay in the morning. I set up my simple camp to the parking lights of the rental car. In my little niece’s cast-off backyard camping tent, I feel like Abraham Lincoln in a guesthouse. I sleep at an angle so I don’t have to double up my legs. Invariably, however, I wake up in this tent with my head pressing one corner and my feet another.

As I write, the sweat is rolling over me in big drops though this tent is lightweight and all the flaps are open, allowing the mesh panels to let in all the air that they’ll allow through. I unzip the tent’s front opening and stick my head out. It’s much cooler outside but I dare not leave the flap open given the ferocity of the mosquito attack earlier. Hope I can sleep.

Mark Twain Cave Campground, Hannibal, Missouri

Journal – Hannibal, Missouri, Tuesday morning, August 1st, 2017

I woke up rather early this morning and emerged from my tent to retrieve my little thermos of coffee and a bagel from the car. It was a beautiful morning. I felt very lazy and sat on the picnic bench for quite awhile watching my fellow campers rise, make breakfast, and walk their dogs. It’s one of the best campgrounds I’ve stayed in, spacious with roomy campsites, very well kept, lush with lots of trees. My coffee and bagel long finished, though, I finally bestirred myself and went for a jog, my stiffness and minor backache reminding me I haven’t gotten nearly enough exercise in the past week. I took a shower, washing some of my clothes along with myself. This is one of my road trip tactics which allow me to travel without carrying along too much clothing. I went and paid for the campsite, since I arrived too late last night to do so, but decided against visiting the caves. They’re privately run and the entrance fees are higher than I want to pay; I’ve already seen some incredible caves on this trip and I’m trying to keep a lid on what I spend. After all, right now, I’m both homeless and jobless for the first time in a very, very long time. Somehow, that state of affairs feels okay.

View of Hannibal, Missouri, from the Mark Twain Memorial Lighthouse

Mark Twain Memorial Lighthouse, Hannibal, Missouri

Right now, I’m at the Mark Twain Memorial Lighthouse, a little white wood structure built to honor the great author in 1935. It’s reached by 244 steps, which makes me happy. I’ve been missing my California hills and this climb is a break from the nearly unrelenting flatness of the Great Plains and the Midwest. My legs welcome the gentle, pleasant burn. I’m drenched with sweat before the exercise even begins; in fact, I never really dried off after my shower. It’s very humid and already very warm at 11 am.

I’m going down to go on the tour of Mark Twain’s childhood home, the fee there is very reasonable. I’m still deciding where I’ll head just after that…

Hannibal, Missouri, August 1st, 2017

Descending from the Mark Twain Memorial Lighthouse, I stop at a sort of brick- and concrete- paved little park with a concrete railing on the southeast end. There’s a plaque on the railing that identifies it as the abutment of the first Mark Twain Memorial Bridge, built in 1935 to mark the centennial of his birth, dedicated in September 1836 by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. The one that crosses the Mississippi here now and which I gazed at the sunset through last night opened in 2000.

Paved park and remaining railing at the foot of the original 1936 Mark Twain Memorial Bridge, Hannibal, Missouri

I continue my descent to Main St, then buy my tour ticket at the Mark Twain Interpretive Center on Main St between North and Hill. It costs $11.00 and gives access to the Mark Twain, Huck Finn, and Becky Thatcher houses, the John Marshall Clemens law office and eventually, when it re-opens after restoration, Grant’s Drug Store. John Marshall Clemens, Sam’s father, was in turn (and sometimes, concurrently) a lawyer, farmer, land speculator, shopkeeper, court clerk, attorney general, and justice of the peace, and failed to succeed financially at all of them. He was a stern man with a cold and upright demeanor, very different than his vivacious, emotive wife Jane Lampton. The story that Twain later repeated was that this unlikely pair married upon Jane’s whim to spite another suitor, a move she later regretted. Husband and wife were respectful to one another but never warm or demonstrative. John died in 1847, leaving his family very badly off. It was up to the children to support the family then. Like all of his brothers, Samuel went to work in the newspaper trade at age twelve as a printer’s apprentice. He earned no wages then, only his board, food, and clothing, but this at least eased the burden on the family’s finances. Sam was able to continue his studies independently, part-time, so between that and his work immersed in communication, his skills in the English language apparently didn’t suffer a bit.

In the Interpretive Center, I peruse photographs and informational placards about Samuel Clemens’ and his later alter ego Mark Twain’s life and work. I’m especially taken by a model for a planned 1935 centennial sculpture that never materialized. It features characters from The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The Prince and the Pauper, and Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc. I’m a bit surprised that since the artist chose to memorialize characters from only four novels, they chose to include many from Joan of Arc. It’s probably the most overlooked of all of his works to this day.

Twain’s fascination with Joan of Arc began, he reminisced, while he was still a printer’s apprentice. A loose page from a book about her blew off the sidewalk and into his face. He was intrigued by what he read, and when his bookworm older brother Henry assured him that Joan was a real person, young Sam sought out and read everything about her that he could find. She remained a lifelong fascination for him. Joan, written many, many years later between 1892-1895, was Twain’s own favorite of his own works, or among his favorites, depending on which of his statements you go by. But it was widely dismissed by critics and still baffles readers and scholars well over a century later. Why did this hard-bitten cultural critic, cynic, and skeptic write a tender and hagiographic historical novel about a medieval French Catholic warrior-saint, and why did this master of American English so love this child of his pen? Parts of the explanation can be provided by Twain’s romantic notions about the delicacy and purity of feminine nature, and his relationship to his daughter Susy. It was no secret that Susy was his favorite daughter, and this daughter, who largely inspired his conception of Joan, also favored this work of her father’s.

First Edition of Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc, 1896, cover

But Joan’s story is not only one of sweet, pure womanliness: it’s also a story of rebellion and staunch individuality. After all, she defied her parents, the local authorities, and the church to take up her greater task of defying and defeating the English in the Hundred Years’ War. After she was captured in battle, she remained steadfast in her unique sense of purpose, defying her judges in the court which finally sentenced her to death for heresy when she was only nineteen years old. This story must have resonated deeply with Clemens’ rebellious nature. Since his days as a teenaged printer’s apprentice under Joseph Ament, then as assistant printer and editor for his older brother Orion’s paper, then as a cub pilot on Mississippi steamboats after he left Hannibal, young Sam chafed under authority. After less than three years at his brother’s paper, which included his first published work, Clemens left Hannibal for St Louis early in the summer of 1853.

Like Twain, I’ve also had a lifelong fascination with Joan of Arc. I watched Ingrid Bergman’s portrayal of her innumerable times with my grandmother, who also insisted I read Twain’s Joan novel, which despite its flaws, I love to this day. Joan is the subject of one of my earliest portraits, and recently, I’ve brought her into my studies here at the University of Edinburgh. Like Twain, I also identify with her rebellious nature and staunch individualism.

I leave the Interpretive Center and take the self-guided tour, first too the ‘Huck Finn’ house where Tom Blankenship lived. Tom was young Sam’s playmate and the inspiration for Huckleberry Finn’s character. The Blankenship family was plagued by alcoholism and poverty, but Sam envied what seemed to him to be their free and easy lifestyle. The tidy clapboard structure atop its stone half-underground basement that stands here today only resembles the original dirty, ramshackle house of the Blankenship’s time here in shape and size.

Then I cross the picket-fenced lawn by the brick-paved walkway to the Clemens family home. Unlike the ‘Huck Finn’ house, this is the original building, thoroughly restored. However, it’s missing the window shutters that it had when Twain returned to Hannibal to visit his old family home in 1902. Perhaps the shutters were added after he lived here as a child. The rooms are furnished and decorated with period-correct furniture, textiles, clothing, and other objects. Each room also features a life-size sculpture of Twain as he appeared during his later years with his trademark bushy mustache and casual white suit with bow tie. The sculptures portray Twain in attitudes of reminiscing: sitting with his hands folded while gazing into space in one room, standing with one hand behind his back while gazing out of the window in another. Twain’s novels are heavily autobiographical, his characters based on members of his family, his friends, neighbors, employers, and teachers, mostly from Hannibal. This is especially true of Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn. I notice that the historical signs outside of the buildings included in this tour, which date to the 1930’s, present Twain’s characters as if they took part in the real-life history of the place. Here, as in Twain’s novels, life and artifice are presented together with no clear indication of which is fact, which is fiction.

Building at the southeast corner of Main and Hill which stands on the site of the second location of Joseph Ament’s paper the Missouri Courier. The offices were moved to the second floor of the building which originally stood here shortly after Samuel Clemens left his employ as a printer’s devil, from 1848-1850.

Mark Twain Museum on Main St, Hannibal, Missouri

Next, I briefly tour the ‘Becky Thatcher’ house. It was the home of Annie Laurie Hawkins, who most people called Laura. She was the neighbor and friend who Twain based the character of Becky Thatcher on in Tom Sawyer. Twain described Laura on many occasions as his first childhood love. They remained friends and kept in contact for life; Laura Hawkins, later Annie Laurie Hawkins Frazer outlived Twain by 18 years. The house has not been set up, like the Clemens house, to reflect how it may have appeared when little Laura lived here. It’s more like a gift shop – slash – museum, but according to the website, the planned decor and permanent exhibits are not installed yet.

I continue my tour next door to John Marshall Clemens’ Justice of the Peace office building. The one room open to the public is set up with some old furniture and books behind glass. If the furnishings reflect reality, it was a small and simple affair. Placards on the wall recount anecdotes from Clemens’ tenure there as a stern but fair man of common sense.

I continue east down Hill St towards the river, passing Grant’s Drug Store, which is under reconstruction, and turn right on Main St. Two blocks down, on my left, I enter the Mark Twain Museum at 120 N Main St.

The museum’s exhibits open with large blue-and-white gallery walls dedicated to original Norman Rockwell paintings and drawings for special editions of Tom Sawyer (1936) and Huckleberry Finn (1940). Rockwell was thrilled to be chosen to illustrate these new editions of what were already considered great American literary classics. It seems to me, as I’m sure it did then, that Rockwell was the obvious choice. His paintings were as nostalgically American as Twain’s resurrections of idyllic small-town childhood in these novels, and sure enough, he perfectly captured the tenderness and humor in Twain’s tales and characterizations. I remember my grandmother (the same one who urged me to read Twain’s Joan) sputtering with indignation when telling me of a woman who said that Rockwell was not an artist, but an illustrator. The woman not only considered these separate professions with different purposes but implied that the latter was inferior to the former. This was unforgivable to my grandmother, both in its snobbery and its slight to her favorite painter. I understand what the woman was getting at but I tend to agree with my grandmother. Rockwell has become unfashionable because of the nostalgia and sentimentality which pervade his work, but if we exclude Rockwell as an artist on those grounds, wouldn’t we be forced to exclude much of Twain? What people create who consider themselves artists, and who are considered as such by other people, has changed at least as many times over the centuries as opinions of what it really is and what it’s for. The woman seemed to have accepted a redefinition of art that excludes Rockwell, but I think any definition that succeeds in doing this is far too narrow. My grandmother used to do the same thing to the term music so that it excluded that wicked, sex-driven rock and roll.

Norman Rockwell exhibit at the Mark Twain Museum, Hannibal, Missouri

Beyond the Rockwell exhibit, I find one of Mark Twain’s white suit jackets in a glass case. With a small tear at the front, it’s draped on a form in front of a photograph of a mature Twain wearing it, or one very like it. According to the museum, it’s the only one known to exist. The white suit has become iconic of Twain since he wore one off-season to deliver a speech in support of copyright laws at a 1906 congressional committee meeting. The eloquent orator with his bushy white hair, flaring white mustache and eyebrows in a glowing white suit before a room of wintry black-clad men made a quite an impression. Twain was delighted with the effect and replicated it at other occasions where dark or formal clothing was expected. He wore a white suit for portrait sessions which resulted in some of the best-known images of him, and was buried in one as well. Though he adopted this devil-may-care look only for a short while before his death, it made an indelible impression on our collective memory of this oh-so-American personality. To this day, nearly all Twain impersonators wear a similar white suit.

Objects from Mark Twain Museum including top hat, pipe, miniature of Susy Clemens, and cast of Mark Twain’s hand

The museum full of interesting objects and accompanying placards with anecdotes from the life of Twain and his family and friends. I look and read to my fill, then decide it’s time continue my journey following Twain. I return to the car and head southeast of Hannibal. Forty-five minutes or so later, I arrive in Florida, Missouri, the birthplace of Samuel Clemens.

To be more precise, I visit Samuel Clemen’s two birthplaces. How can this be? Unusually for birthplaces, the building in which he was born has been moved about half a mile from its original foundation and now resides in an enormous structure built around and over it. Preserved from the elements, the faded, drooping, two-room little blue cabin is located within the Mark Twain Memorial Shrine at the Mark Twain Birthplace Memorial Site, next to Mark Twain Lake, in Mark Twain State Park. Clearly, the state of Missouri loves her illustrious native son.

Interior of the cabin in which Samuel Clemens was born, Mark Twain Memorial Shrine at Mark Twain State Park

As with the Clemens’ home in Hannibal, the rooms are decorated with furniture and other period-correct items. The Clemenses didn’t live in the tiny village of Florida for long. The family had moved there in mid-1835 after briefly stopping in St Louis. They intended to settle there after John Marshall’s multiple failed attempts at farming and storekeeping, but the cholera epidemic raging through the city likely spurred them to move on again. They chose Florida because many members of Jane’s family had settled there. When they arrived, Jane was already pregnant with her sixth child. John Marshall earned his living here yet again by storekeeping, this time together with his brother-in-law, John Quarles, a man Mark Twain admired greatly. On November 30, 1835, Samuel was born, premature and sickly. Though many feared he wouldn’t last long, he would be among the four of the seven Clemens children that survived childhood.

Samuel Langhorne Clemens and his family at their Hartford, Connecticut home in healthier and wealthier times, Mark Twain Birthplace Memorial museum placard photo in Florida, Missouri

Besides the cabin, I find a wealth of artifacts from the life of Mark Twain with his wife and children. The artifacts together with the exhibits, the photographs and informational placards, tell of a life of harmony and plenty followed by sorrow and financial hardship. By the late 1860’s, Twain was making a decent living as a newspaper editor and in 1870, he married progressive, wealthy Olivia Langdon. Together, they established a lavish home in Hartford, Connecticut. It was designed by Edward Tuckerman Potter, ornately decorated by Louis Comfort Tiffany, filled with hand-carved and elaborate furnishings from all over the world, and occupied by Mark Twain and Olivia Clemens, their three daughters Susy, Clara, and Jean (their infant son Langdon died of diphtheria in 1872), and a bevy of servants. The family moved into the house with little Susy and baby Clara in the fall of 1874. While living here, Twain became a successful author and made an excellent income, he and his family enjoying the life of plenty with which they surrounded themselves. However, Twain’s enthusiasm for innovative scientific gadgets and hunger for more wealth led him to make a series of very costly and very unsuccessful financial investments, in which the family lost nearly all their money. To pay off his substantial debts and support the family, they were forced to close down the Hartford home and move to Europe, where living expenses were generally much lower. There, Twain restored the family finances by a grueling series of speaking tours. Sadly, however, Susy contracted meningitis while she and Jean stayed behind with family in Elmira, New York. When learning of Susy’s illness, Olivia and Clara hurried back the United States to join her. However, they didn’t make it back in time. On August 18, 1896, Susy died at the Hartford home she so loved and missed. Thirteen years later, Jean also died, aged only 29, during an epileptic seizure.

Collection of objects from the Clemens’ family home in Hartford, CT, at the Mark Twain Birthplace Memorial Site Museum in Florida, Missouri. Clara, the only daughter to outlive Mark Twain and Olivia Clemens, provided the stories of the family memorabilia here

Pedestal marker at the original site of the cabin where Samuel Clemens was born, on what was South Mill St, Florida, Missouri

Twain lost his beloved Olivia, or ‘Livy’ as he called her, in 1904. She was his constant and close companion, his main editor and critic, and the love of his life. For the six years he outlived her, Twain wandered, living sometimes in Europe, sometimes in New York City. Twain and his daughter Clara always had a fraught relationship: both were stubborn, strong-willed, and independent. But Clara had to do much of the emotional heavy work in the family. She looked after Olivia in her final illness while also helping to look after Jean, whose epilepsy rendered her both fragile and violent. She was also the go-between when her dying mother was kept separate, sometimes unsuccessfully, from her emotionally charged husband and his outbursts. Since her father’s death in 1910, Clara served as the caretaker and promoter of her father’s legacy. Many of the artifacts I see here today are here thanks to Clara’s fundraising efforts, as are those that are preserved in the Hartford home and museum.

I leave the Birthplace museum and drive the half mile down the little county road that leads to the remnants of tiny Florida. Just off the road in a grassy field at what was South Mill St, there’s a carved granite pedestal which marks it as the original site of Samuel Clemens’ birth. The pedestal used to support a bust of Twain, but it was also moved to the Birthplace museum to protect it from the elements. It’s a quiet, peaceful place, with a few scattered homes and a church in view. It is now, as it was then, an improbable place to produce the restless, cosmopolitan iconoclast and self-created character Mark Twain.

The site of James Boswell’s place in James Court off the Royal Mile is near one of my favorite pubs in Edinburgh: the Jolly Judge. You can see the plaque on the wall near the doorway just beyond the lamp.

In James Court, just off Edinburgh’s famed Royal Mile, there’s a little winding set of stone steps leading to a simple wood door. The plaque near the steps reveals that they lead to the place where James Boswell lived from 1773 to 1786. The first flat that Boswell occupied in James Square was torn down, but the recently discovered remains of a very old staircase in one of these oft-reconstructed buildings may be the one which linked the two floors of his home. From what I’ve read thus far, it seems this marked building, site of Boswell’s second flat here in James Court, contains only parts of the original structure.

Boswell, the Edinburgh-born lawyer, diarist, and writer most well known for his biography of Samuel Johnson, has connections to two towering figures of the Enlightenment: David Hume and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. The ways in which his life intersected with theirs exemplify his vibrant and complex life and personality.

On Sunday, July 7, 1776, Boswell visited the bedside of his dying friend Hume. Hume was the leading light of the Scottish Enlightenment, often honored as the greatest philosopher to write in English. In fact, Boswell first moved to in James Court, into Hume’s cute but tiny old flat, taking it over when Hume moved to New Town in 1772. It was at the latter place that Boswell, ‘too late for church’ anyway, stopped by to see if Hume, notorious for his religious skepticism, ‘persisted in disbelieving a future state even when he had death before his eyes.’ Boswell, habitual bacchanalist in wine and women, was nevertheless very religious and had a superstitious terror of hell. He was dismayed and shocked to find that his old friend did not only persist in his disbelief but was at ease, even happy, and showed no discernable fear of his impending annihilation. Boswell was left ‘disturbed… for some time.’

Ten years earlier, Boswell played a part in destroying the trust and friendship between Hume and Rousseau. Hume had agreed to help Rousseau, who was fleeing political persecution in Europe, find safe haven in England. Mutual admiration and a warm friendship sprung up between the two menimmediately though Baron d’Holbach (another mainstay of the French Enlightenment community) warned Hume that Rousseau was not to be trusted. This proved true. Rousseau’s growing paranoia led him to believe that Hume was plotting to destroy him and began to spread word of Hume’s perceived deviousness. The unraveling situation was not helped when Hume’s friend Boswell, charged with escorting Rousseau’s beloved mistress Thérèse Le Vasseur to join him in England, had an affair with her along the way. Rousseau believed that Hume had helped orchestrate this betrayal as well. Aware of Boswell’s notoriously insatiable sexual appetite, Hume certainly showed very poor judgment in trusting Boswell with this task. Before long, Hume and Rousseau became bitter enemies. Hurt and angry, Hume attacked Rousseau publicly as well, sometimes in very unseemly ways, and the whole episode revealed that even the most wise can also be the most foolish.

Another view of the site of James Boswell’s home in James Court. This would have been the second and larger flat that Boswell occupied here; the building which held the first, formerly David Hume’s, was torn down.

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From the Michael J. Howlett building in downtown Springfield (part of which stands on the site of the Ninian Edwards house where Abraham and Mary Todd Lincoln were married and where Mary died), I head northwest on highway 97 to New Salem Historic Park. This is the site of New Salem, the small frontier commercial village which played no small role in Lincoln’s life as a young man striking out on his own. It’s a pleasant drive through farmland with homes and farm buildings and gas stations and tiny general stores scattered here and there. In a little under half an hour, I reach a wooded area, and soon after that, take the turnout to my left to New Salem. I stop for a snack at the little cafe offering a modest selection of hot dogs, nachos, sandwiches, and other things that take the edge off but don’t suffice as a meal. The park’s visitor center buildings are all closed because the air conditioning system isn’t working. I don’t blame them at all for not opening up: it feels very much like a summer day in the Midwest, hot and humid, and imagine a full day indoors would get stuffy and miserable. But the park itself is open to roam, so I do.

I find that some of the volunteer interpreters are not deterred today by the heat or the lack of an air-conditioned space to retreat to. Two men in early-to-mid 19th-century costume roam the park under shady, battered straw hats, recounting the history of New Salem and anecdotes from Lincoln’s life here. Some kind soul(s) placed large coolers here and there filled with ice water as well. It’s a lovely place to wander, and I take my time exploring. Though I visit all of them, there are so many structures that I’ll just show and tell of the ones that have some connection to Lincoln. The park contains 22 reconstructed and one original building from the New Salem of Lincoln’s time. The reconstructions are based on the findings from archaeological digs, on descriptions of the town from former residents, and on other representations of buildings, furniture, and tools from the same time period. Most of the buildings, as far as could be determined, are built on or near the original foundations. Many of the furnishings, equipment, dishes, and more are from that time period, too, collected locally.

Lincoln’s first sight of New Salem was from the Sangamon River, which powered the little town’s gristmill and sawmill. On that day in April 1831, to be more precise, he was in the river: barefoot, hatless, and soaked to the skin, working frantically to dislodge Denton Offutt’s flatboat from where it had gotten stuck going over the dam. Lincoln had helped build the flatboat whose cargo of bacon and grain, en route to New Orleans, was in danger of going overboard. His efforts to save the boat and cargo succeeded, and Offutt, impressed and relieved, offered Lincoln the management of the new general store he planned to build for New Salem. It took Offutt longer the get the store up and running than he planned, but eventually, it did open in September of that same year, and Lincoln did run it after all.

Henry Onstot’s cabin, right, and cooper shop, left, New Salem, Illinois. The cooper shop is the only original building from New Salem; the rest have been reconstructed

Interior of the Onstot cooper shop where Lincoln would retreat and light a fire to read by.

Henry Onstot, whose house is the first I visit, was the area cooper, maker of barrels and other implements that required the same wood-steaming and bending techniques. His cooper’s shop next door is the only original building that still stands in New Salem. After the village was abandoned in 1840, Onstat moved his business, building and all, to nearby Petersburg. The building was returned to New Salem in 1922, not long after the park was opened to the public by the State of Illinois. Sixteen years earlier, in 1906, William Randolph Hearst purchased the site and surrounding lands and donated it to the Old Salem Chautauqua Association, who had invited him to speak and had sparked his interest in the site and its history. (Chautauqua is an adult education movement founded in the 1870’s, named for the New York lake near which the first meeting was held.) The Association, in turn, donated it to the state. This building is the only thing on this site that Lincoln was sure to have touched. William Herndon, Lincoln’s future law partner and biographer, tells us that Lincoln frequently would retreat to the cooper shop to read by the light of the fire he’d build using the leftover barrel-making materials.

The Trent brothers’ residence behind Henry Onstot’s house and cooper shop, New Salem, Illinois. Alexander Trent served with Lincoln in the Black Hawk War in 1832, and the next year, he and his brother Martin took over the Lincoln-Berry store.

A view of Lincoln’s New Salem, Illinois

The doorway to Jack Kelso’s place, New Salem, Illinois

I visit the Trent brothers’ house next, then the Kelso-Miller house. The Kelso-Miller house is a sort of duplex sometimes called a ‘dogtrot house’. The front doors face one another across an unwalled roofed and floored passage between the two halves. Jack Kelso, who New Salem historian Benjamin Platt Thomas describes as ‘a lazy dreamer’ and ‘the village philosopher,’ was a hunter, trapper, fisher, and odd-jobber. He loved Shakespeare and Robert Burns and could recite from them at length, to the surprise and delight of many. Lincoln became a lifelong fan of both.

Especially during his early years here, Lincoln, who never owned a house in New Salem, would board with them. It amazes me that Kelso and his wife could host Lincoln: the tiny size of this place makes it difficult to imagine that it could hold three cooking, eating, sleeping people, especially given the girth of Kelso and the height of Lincoln.

The interior of Jack Kelso’s residence; there’s not much more of this one-room house than what you can see here. Can you imagine three adults staying in this tiny place?

Kelso-Miller building, New Salem, Illinois. The Kelsos’ place is to the left, the Millers’ is to the right. Miller’s blacksmith shop can be seen at the far right and in the two photos to follow

Joshua Miller was the village blacksmith and wagon-builder. His wife and Kelso’s were sisters. Unlike Kelso, Miller was not a bit lazy. His skills were in high demand in the growing village so he was kept constantly busy. Now that Miller was here, the villages’ horses could remain properly shod; the doors and windows could have metal fittings instead of wood ones; plenty of wagons would have been needed to carry grain to and from the gristmill, and would require regular maintenance and repair as well.

Interior of Mentor Graham’s schoolhouse. It also served as a church on Sundays.

Mentor Graham, the schoolmaster, was among those impressed by Lincoln’s ability, attentiveness to detail, and friendly concern for his neighbors and customers. According to New Salem historian Thomas, Graham assisted him in his continuing self-education, finding him a ready, apt, and diligent student. He helped Lincoln learn surveying as well, often working with Lincoln late into the night doing and checking calculations. Yet another biographer, Michael Burlingame, disputes the story that Graham was much of a help to Lincoln educationally, despite Graham’s and Lincoln’s friend Robert Rutledge’s claims. According to many of his former pupils, Graham had very poor math skills and was, in fact, a poor teacher overall. He had barely passed his teaching certification exams. Lincoln and Graham must have gotten along well enough, in any case: Lincoln boarded with his family for six months. If Graham’s former pupils spoke the truth, however, Lincoln likely mastered the skill of surveying on his own.

Mentor Graham’s schoolhouse, exterior view. It was originally located about a half mile southwest of the site of this reproduction.

This is a reproduction of the house of Isaac Guliher or Golliher, variously spelled in my sources. His only significance in this account is that he also served with Lincoln in the Black Hawk War, one of the little troop that’s described in Thomas’ history of New Salem as “…a hard-looking set of men, unkempt and unshaved” who “made war on the pigs and chickens,” and one of whom replied “go to the devil” when Lincoln gave his first command. Though Lincoln was very proud of being elected their captain, it sounds as if would have been a tough job.

First location of the Berry-Lincoln store in New Salem, from late 1832 to January 1833

Two buildings past the house of Isaac Guliher, one of Lincoln’s fellow soldiers in the Black Hawk War, stands a little pointy-roofed shop. The Berry-Lincoln store building, the first of its two locations, looks very like most of the other buildings here, sturdy but modest, strictly utilitarian with its rough-hewn log structure, pointed shake roof, and small door and windows. In 1832, Lincoln entered into partnership with William Berry, buying out James and J. Rowan Herndon’s share of the general store. Lincoln, as usual, was broke. The modest compensation he received for his service in the Black Hawk War that spring and early summer wouldn’t go far. He paid his share with a promissory note, as he did for his share of the stock he and Berry purchased from a defunct local store. The store was never very busy so Lincoln read quite a bit. In his New Salem years, he mostly read Shakespeare, Burns, and the Bible, as well as law books, Kirkham’s Grammar, and other practical books. Other than poetry and Shakespeare, he didn’t read much literature, in which he had little interest.

The store limped along and, to save it, Berry decided to apply for a license to sell liquor in small quantities, which made it effectively a tavern as well. This didn’t suit Lincoln, who didn’t drink and saw the ill effects on those who did. He released his interest in the store in April of 1833. Once again, Lincoln was broke, and this time, in debt. He became an odd-jobber again like his friend Kelso, but not a lazy one. He split rails, worked on the farms, in the mill, and tended Sam Hill’s store, and when he got the chance, took any jobs he could get relating to voting, politics, and the law. In May, thanks to one of his very numerous friends, he was appointed to the job of village postmaster. It paid poorly but it was a social job, suitable for this friendly and often gregarious young man, and it gave him access to all the newspapers coming through the post. Since it was only a part-time job, this again gave him some time to read and study, though his odd-jobbing continued. A friend had recommended he try for the job of assistant to the newly appointed county surveyor John Calhoun. That job, coupled with his postmaster’s salary, should give him enough to live on. So he borrowed Calhoun’s books and learned surveying, took the job, and from January 1834 to late 1836, he made a success of it. But when his debts began to come due from the failed partnership with Berry and other speculations, what he was earning turned out, yet again, not to be nearly enough.

Berry-Lincoln store, interior view, New Salem, Illinois

Lincoln the Ranger by Fred M. Torrey, portraying Lincoln as a soldier in the Black Hawk War, at the Lincoln Tomb, Springfield, Illinois

When it the time to elect state legislators began to come around in 1834, Lincoln’s friends encouraged him to run again. He first ran for that office in 1832, and his platform had included state investment in making the Sangamon River more navigable instead of putting in a much more expensive railroad line. He knew the river well, having been a flatboat pilot on it, and he knew just where it needed to be straightened, cleared, and dammed to get the goods flowing cheaply and easily to market. He also promoted public education, the lack thereof which had caused him so much frustration, and limits on predatory lending practices. Lincoln didn’t win the race, but made a respectable showing for a very young man of no means who had only been there about a year. In 1834, however, things were different. He had been a local businessman and postmaster, and his education and circle of friends had both increased. Among those who most encouraged Lincoln to run again was the justice of the peace Bowling Green.

So run he did, and he was elected to the Illinois House of Representatives on August 4th, 1834. Lincoln would be reelected to that office four times, serving as state legislator from 1834-1842.

During his 1834 run for office, Lincoln would develop his interest and education in the law. John Todd Stuart, who served with Lincoln in the Black Hawk War, also ran for state legislature in 1832 and won. He would eventually become Lincoln’s first law partner, took an active interest in his prospects and loaned him his law books. Lincoln’s friend and mentor Bowling Green (what a name!) also recognized that Lincoln’s sharp mind took right to his legal studies. As justice of the peace, he allowed Lincoln to comment on his court cases, which in turn led to many turning to Lincoln for advice and assistance drafting legal documents.

Rutledge Tavern, New Salem, Illinois, 2017

Rutledge Tavern kitchen

Almost three-quarters of the way down the main street, I take the right turn to that leads to the Rutledge Tavern. Its proprietor, James Rutledge, was one of the founders of New Salem in 1828. Rutledge was one of those who encouraged Lincoln to run for state legislator. This one and a half-story structure first served as the Rutledges’ home, but when the town began to grow, it was converted into a tavern or inn, with a low sleeping area overhead and a public dining room. This was one of the places where Lincoln regularly lodged and ate his meals.

In his biography of Lincoln, Herndon made much of a story that Ann Rutledge, James Rutledge’s daughter, was not only the first, but also the true love of Lincoln’s life. They certainly would have seen each other frequently, and as a petite, pretty, and plump young woman, she likely would have caught his eye (all of the women Lincoln is known to have courted or loved were curvy). Ann died in 1835, probably of typhoid, when she was only 22 years old; Abraham was 26. There are many stories of a courtship between Ann and Abraham, and of a tentative engagement contingent on an earlier beau’s reneging on his own promise. Some of the stories of their love affair claim that Lincoln wept by her deathbed, others that Lincoln was so distraught after her death that his friends kept suicide watch over him. Yet these stories are fragmentary, hearsay, and recalled many years or decades after the fact. It’s a sweet story, but we may never know how much of it is true. We must keep in mind that Herndon pushed the story within a larger narrative of Lincoln as a man who had lost in love, ending up with a difficult woman unworthy of him. As I have written previously, it appears to me that his portrayal of Mary Todd and her relationship with Lincoln is slanted based on Herndon’s personal dislike of her, and is not a balanced assessment. In any case, Ann and Abraham almost certainly shared an attraction and possibly love, and Abraham was certainly grieved by the early death of the sweet and pretty innkeeper’s daughter.

Rutledge Tavern, interior view, New Salem, Illinois

I return to the main road and straight ahead of me, across the street, I find a large milled limber structure with a nice shady porch. This is the second location of Berry and Lincoln’s general store.

Second Berry-Lincoln store, image credit Learning Abe website. (The photo I took of the outside of the shop is missing, I must have accidentally deleted it.) Lincoln and Berry moved the business here in January of 1833 when this larger, nicer-looking lumber building came available

Second Berry-Lincoln store, interior view. The building had been owned previously by John MacNamar, the absent fiancée of Ann Rutledge, Lincoln’s storied first love

I spot a large sign in a grassy area followed by a series of smaller signs in a row leading toward the Sangamon River below the bluff. I read the sign and find that this is an archaeological site that has not be reconstructed.

Archaeology Walk in New Salem, Illinois. The sign reads: ‘The reconstructed buildings at New Salem are based on archaeological excavations conducted in the 1930’s. In 1994, two archaeological sites were discovered in this field which were missed in the 1930’s researchers. Unlike most of the other sites in this village, no deed records exist for these sites, and there are no stories of the families who lived here. Only a single hand drawn map, published by R.J. Onstot (son of Henry Onstot) in 1909, pictures houses in this location, but they are mysteriously unlabled…’ The path here follows the old roadbed that ran across here. Many of the places associated with Lincoln in and around New Salem have not been reconstructed here, including Bowling Green’s and the Abells’ homes about a mile north of here

It reminds me that there are many inhabitants of New Salem who Lincoln befriended, did business with, and lived with whose homes have not been reconstructed. For example, Lincoln lived with his friend Bowling Green’s neighbors Bennett and Elizabeth Abell for a time. Lincoln would regularly borrow books from them and Elizabeth, especially, thought he showed promise. She took such a liking to him that she introduced him to her sister, Mary Owens, in 1833, as a potential beau. They courted briefly a time but, despite Elizabeth’s eagerness that they marry, their relationship didn’t work out. Years later, she wrote to Lincoln’s law partner and biographer William Herndon that though she thought Lincoln a good man, nevertheless, he was ‘deficient in those little links which make up the chain of a woman’s happiness.’ She broke off the relationship; Lincoln, apparently, regretted ever getting involved and had written her letters hinting that they’d be better off without each other

J. Rowan Herndon residence, New Salem, Illinois.

I continue east along the main road, and to my right, I see the Herndon brothers’ house. One of them, J. Rowan Herndon, was married to Mentor Graham’s sister Elizabeth, and Lincoln lived with them for a time. Herndon was Berry’s original partner in the general store but since they didn’t get along, Herndon sold his share to Lincoln on credit. In 1833, Herndon accidentally shot and killed his wide when he was preparing to go out hunting. He left town to escape the rumors that he killed his wife on purpose, but it was no good: the rumors followed him for the rest of his life. Lincoln moved to Graham’s house when Rowan left.

Denton Offutt Store, New Salem, Illinois.

Continuing onto the last little road which veers off to the left from the main road, I find the first store Lincoln worked in when he moved to New Salem. It was from Offutt’s flatboat that Lincoln first saw New Salem, and it was Offutt’s promise of a job managing his new store that caused Lincoln to move here in 1831. So this humble little store is the one that brought Lincoln to this place so formative to his life and education. It’s not much to look at, but it brings home to me anew how amazing Lincoln’s story really is.

Perhaps it was the fact that New Salem was both a tiny frontier village and a commercial community reaching hard beyond itself, seeking to become a hub of skilled trade and interstate commerce, that Lincoln found it such an effective springboard. From 1831 – 1837, this close-knit and ambitious village nurtured an uneducated, awkward, poor farm-boy into a canny lawyer, a political powerhouse, and a great moral leader, perhaps the greatest President the United States will ever see.